Okay, I know I'm supposed to remain professional and “authorly” and all that stuff, but you'll have to excuse me of that whole business for a moment so that I can say HOLY CRAP, I've finally come to the end of my final edit on The Footsteps of Cain! That is to say, I've gone as far as I think I can fixing the stuff that wasn't working...logic issues, inconsistent formatting, emotional bolstering where important stuff was falling flat.... At this point any of the other extrospective things that my tunnel vision won't show me will have to be screamed at me from my ARC readers, the first eyes to see the book beyond my own.

I'm super-psyched, though. Can't believe I'm finally here. I've used the words, “yeah...still working on it...just need more time” as an answer to anybody who's ever asked me “how's the book going?” for so long, I'm sure they started to doubt that it would ever happen. Yeah, well, I'm shedding my fraud-skin today, you guys! Well, the first layer of it, anyway. I guess there could be deeper layers to my fraud...um...ness, that we'll all discover together as we go along.

Fraudness. Yeah. I've decided that's a word.

Yeah.

Now, we're on to formatting. Turns out that once you're done with the source document, it's important to actually massage it into a version that is visually appealing to a reader's FACE. I mean, I've been formatting it according to my own standards from a writing perspective, but now I need to make sure I have a tool to help me ensure that the print and ebook versions look like they're supposed to. Basically, I don't want to make potential readers' eyes explode when they open up the thing. My own, piercing intuition tells me that exploding eyes will NOT SELL BOOKS. The more reviews I can avoid that say “Made my eyes explode and now I can't see anymore. Would not buy again.”, the better.

So I'm researching some tools this morning, so that I can have something produced by the end of the week. Time's a-wastin', my curiously grizzled hillbilly brain is telling me, and so I gotta get this thing in the old outbox folder and shove it out into the world!

Life is great! I feel like I have the whole world in a headlock! But, not in a “I'm a bully and I'm taking your lunch money” kind of way...more like a “I'm a big strong matador and I'ma gonna wrastle this here bull to the ground, yo!”. (I don't know why my matador character is equal parts country AND urban, but it's MY CHARACTER, and I can do what I want.)